How Crack Changes Lives

I was taught how to cook and smoke crack when I was 21. It was in a high-rise hotel room on East 34th Street in Manhattan, and some friends from New Jersey in town for the New Year s Eve Phish shows at Madison Square Garden showed me the technique to convert powder cocaine into its smokable counterpart.

These upper-middle-class suburban kids seemed to know every detail about the drug, from the minutiae of proper pipe handling taking a hit requires some optimization to the kinder, gentler euphemism for crack, hubbas. They knew how to cook HCL powder cocaine into a base freebase as well as where to find the street version of the same drug crack. Earlier that night, before I d learned to make freebase, we had driven to someone s house in Paterson, N.J., and one of my friends went inside and bought a bag of ready-made, smokable rocks. I sat shotgun on the way into the city while the backseat passenger took the wheel, allowing the driver to use both hands to take a hit off the pipe.

My levels of experimentation have varied since that night, from three months of daily usage in 1999 after that initial introduction to a year or two of abstinence. I eventually settled into a seasonal habit I smoked crack only during the winter months, followed by a less moderate phase in 2013.

I don t present these stories for shock value. On the contrary, I proceed with a lot of anxiety, knowing the potential to upset and alienate family members, friends, present or past business associates, future landlords, and whoever else is likely to take a dim view of the information I m volunteering.

So why would I choose to share, both in this story and in my new podcast Dope Stories. Because I believe it s necessary to forge a truthful, direct discussion about drugs before we can comprehend addiction, much less effectively treat drug abuse or hope to implement rational drug policy. My visceral fear when presenting these revelations shows that we are not close to achieving that level of dialogue.

The incisive documentary The House I Live In and Carl Hart s book High Price: A Neuroscientist s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know about Drugs and Society both show that this country s war on drugs could more accurately be described as a systematic effort to marginalize immigrants, minorities, and poor people, decade after decade. I am certainly aware, then, that my ability to experiment with a highly toxic drug has been enabled by the fact that I won the socio-economic lottery at birth, growing up upper-middle-class and Jewish, living on the Upper West Side with smart, caring parents.

That being said, there isn t anything ennobling about going on a crack binge or, for that matter, waking up with a hangover from one drug that is inarguably more toxic than cocaine alcohol. But more people need to understand that addiction can be a middle ground, a place between having zero substance abuse issues and needing to hit rock bottom before you can get better.

I expect to smoke a lot less crack in 2014 than I did in 2013, but I d be setting myself up for failure if I made abstinence a goal.

I m not particularly interested in bottoming out or destroying my life in exchange for whatever temporary benefit I get from smoking cocaine. On the other hand, the path I ve taken over the last 15 years indicates that I m not motivated to achieve total abstinence. That s why I have tried to find a middle way, hopefully reducing the amount of harm I inflict upon myself. That is another reason why I m sharing my story here, and why I don t hide my drug use from those who are close to me. I need my friends and loved ones to help keep me in check.

It s not hard to imagine a starker alternative, one in which I was ostracized based on the decades-old perception of the crack user as an out-of-control, devious individual. If family members and friends had forced me to choose between total sobriety and being out on the streets, I can imagine myself traveling down darker and more self-destructive roads.

In my experience and observation, putting a user in rehab is often a way of avoiding, not treating, drug addiction. I understand that there is enormous value in recovery programs, abstinence, and maintaining sobriety. But I also believe the implied choice between abstinence and rock bottom presents users with two options that are equally unsustainable and unreasonable.

To be clear, my crack habit call it a crack problem if you want has not always been a hunky-dory, easily manageable part of my drug experimentation. I know exactly why and how crack is wack, and those details could fill up a column of greater length. I ve felt the potential for physical and mental devastation.

But as much as I don t intend to glorify crack use, I also don t need to spend time condemning it or comparing it with other commonly used substances that aren t viewed in the same negative light.

I d rather go back to the early part of 1999, when my friend and I shared a habit that eventually took us on divergent paths. We held down day jobs so we could afford our nightly fix. I worked as a bike messenger. We would spend the evenings waiting for our cocaine to be delivered, then we d cook it and watch MTV. That s when the network still played videos like 2pac s Changes where he raps, both black and white smoking crack tonight and Eminem s My Name Is, the lead single of an album that might as well be dedicated to the highs and lows of hard drug use.

The high from crack provided an escape, an instantaneous and short-lived burst of creative and emotional energy, a way of simultaneously embracing and expelling whatever darkness was circulating through our lives. And to this day, I remain intrigued by the taboo aspect of the drug. I am still sometimes compelled by curiosity to experience the forbidden, to remind myself once again what all the fuss is about.

But around March of that first year of crack use, I found myself, in the parlance of 12-step programs, sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sleepless as the sun rose after another binge, I felt the pattern had to end, and for me, that day, it did. For a while, anyway. My friend wasn t able to cut the cord as cleanly, but when he did, he did it more permanently and with a conviction that continues to inspire me.

First, though, he went further down the crack rabbit hole of paranoia and self-degradation and he proceeded to repeat a similar pattern with other substances before he successfully pursued recovery. In the time since, he has made achievements in business and academia that would be impressive for anyone and impossible for me. He has been completely sober for so long that he doesn t even identify himself that way he simply is.

There is a variety of paths that a drug user can take, both on the way to addiction and toward the possibility of recovery. Or moderation. Or self-destruction. Except moderation is not a socially acceptable option, when to me it often seems like a simple reality.

I don t have a problem with 12-step philosophy. Rather, I think 12-step programs can be useful to drug users a lot sooner than the point where they hit rock bottom. There s plenty of simple truth to be found in the Serenity Prayer, and plenty of value in knowing what HALT stands for hungry, angry, lonely, tired. That value exists even for those drug users who don t accept that their life has become unmanageable.

In my more recent phase of experimentation, I ve started to notice the deleterious consequences of the habit. This includes some physical side effects that are hard to quantify, like what smoking crack does to my lungs, leaving my insides feeling rawer than any amount of cigarettes or weed both of which I have smoked for 20 years.

Then there s the irrational paranoia, the unfounded fear that someone is out there monitoring my behavior or that the police are ready to kick down the door and bust me. An expert in substance abuse explained to me that this is the result of my limbic brain overriding my cortical brain. In the throes of a crack binge, I essentially become a frightened animal.

My rough understanding of that science helped me understand why I was subjecting myself to a level of mental chaos and tension that I don t really enjoy. My behavior corresponds to a classic view of addiction: the inability to control usage relative to pleasure. But that doesn t capture it fully, because I still find benefits in the high. I may be making objectively subpar decisions regarding how to spend my time and money, but I ve also had a lot of fun and I haven t been trying to hasten the supposedly inevitable bottoming out that many believe is a prerequisite to gaining control of your habit.

In fact, although I probably smoked more crack last year than I did in 1999, I also had the best year of my life in 2013. I got married. I hit a peak in my career as a poker player, a profession I took up in 2005 and have been struggling with since 2011, when legislation basically outlawed online poker, forcing me to work in a foreign country. My life came into focus in 2013, and I realized I had to get back to the United States, put an end to my career as a poker player, and devote myself to marriage and to writing.

I don t describe the events of the past year to defy the traditional narrative that drugs cloud your thinking. In this part of the tale, there is neither correlation nor causation, just the good and the bad, side by side. I had a great year good, and I smoked too much crack bad.

I expect to smoke a lot less crack in 2014 than I did in 2013, but I think I d be setting myself up for failure if I made abstinence a goal. Despite my awareness that the drug has toxic physical and mental side effects that I want to avoid, past experience indicates that I will likely indulge my habit in the coming months.

When I talked about my drug use on the Dope Stories podcast, my co-host, Pauly McGuire, asked me how I was going to advance my conscious desire to avoid smoking crack given my occasional lust for it. I had to stop and think about that before coming up with my answer.

Tennis, I said, thinking back to a recent experience in which I dragged myself onto the court after a long night of smoking crack. Describing that experience to him, I remembered it all very clearly: how muddied the skies looked, how the trees and hills around the court seemed to sag, how my lungs burned as I ran around the court. I compared it with a normal tennis lesson when I wasn t hung over from smoking crack and how much I clearly preferred the high from playing tennis to the high from crack.

The next time I had the urge to smoke, I thought back to that day on the tennis court, and I resisted. It didn t exactly feel like I had the answer, but at least it felt like I was starting to ask the right questions.

The Crack Journey. The journeys that A crack cocaine possessed person can change. I am proof of that. My changed life is a result of my changed heart. How.

Video embedded  Crack cocaine is an illegal substance that can be extremely addictive even upon first use. The effects of crack cocaine can be severe and even deadly.

The Bible Changes Lives; The Watchtower 2012 Similar Material; The Bible Changes Lives; Many times, after having smoked crack cocaine all night long.

Trivia Crack original Spanish name: Preguntados is a mobile app that allows users to compete against friends and people around the world. Modeled after popular.

Learn about the effects of crack cocaine, devil drug, on addicts from stories and video by former users. Find more information from video about freebase coke, such as.

Feeling possessed by the crack-bite, is the

loneliest, darkest, sickest, most ugly gnawing unbelievable and truly

captivating all consuming demonic place to be.

The journeys that crack cocaine took me on ended up being a

blessing. It exposed me to the evil side of life. It is there that I found, ate

and loved the devil s candy. This hideous stuff could be nothing but evil. I

hated treatment and jail because I felt like time and life just went by never to

get it back and it went by so slowit crawled. The effects of crack are so

below the lowest, really sad and feels like a demonic possession. I hated being

called a crackhead even though that is what I was. Just to be called a true

crackhead and that I will never be able to stop smoking crack cocaine were the

lowest words heard by me ever. When a crackhead gets ticked when I say it now

like on my LIVE Internet Radio Show my reaction is goodlet it piss you off.

Get angry with cracknot me. Attack crack. Hold nothing back when attacking.

For a long time, a very long and terrible time, I was caught up in the revolving

treatment doors and the revolving jail doors. Both kept my life spinning for

many years of misery, despair and the absolute feeling of no hope of ever

ridding myself from the power crack cocaine seemed to have over me. I sought

treatment time after time with little or no results. When I did get results,

they were short lived and I stayed a crackhead for many years. The effects are

so devastating, a possession is what this has to be.

Smoking crack cocaine will destroy everything you have ever

thought, felt, desired, loved and believed in. Crack cocaine goes as far as

destroying your life completely, along with anyone willing to come close enough

to the stench created by smoking crack cocaine.

A crack cocaine possessed person can change. I am proof of that. My changed life

is a result of my changed heart. How do you change the heart. To thine own self

be true. My story is no different than anyone who has been or still might be a

crackhead. I am fortunate. It is very difficult to explain to someone who has

never smoked crack cocaine how crack cocaine takes you over. Their comment might

be something like, Can t you just decide to quit. Although this could be true,

for most crackheads this would not be an option. I m convinced that cocaine in

any form is a lie, whether it s crack, powder, eating, drinking, shooting,

smoking or snorting, all of it is part of the devil s candy lie.

Getting clean from crack cocaine sucks, not the end results but the process.

Treatment centers never offered any more to me than groups, sponsorship, and

step programs. All the crap that has trailed you from crack cocaine use comes up

and takes a chunk out of your sorry crack-ass. If we would deal with the

internal spiritual battle of one attempting to quit, then maybe we would grab on

to how this can be done. So can we just get on our knees and cry out to God to

rescue us from crack cocaine. I believe we can ask to help us resist the devil

which happens to be crack cocaine in this instance. It still is a choice for us

to actually smoke crack cocaine, a bad one, but one. Does it instantly stop. For

some yes. For others like myself not so sudden. If one would put in as much

effort into being clean and understanding the road ahead as we did in chasing

the candy, everyone could be crack-free for life.

You can stop the madness. I did. I believe and hope that I can somehow make a

connection within a crackheads dark world. We seek to help those connected to a

crackhead and in some small possible way the crackhead themselves. When the

darkness of crack cocaine finally engulfs someone, it could be through you that

someone might be able to get this message just a little faster than I did. I

have seen and done all that surrounds crack cocaine use. It is horrible. Use my

horrible experiences to get your power over crack cocaine. Praise GOD there is

always hope. HE will help start your journey to living crack cocaine freebut

be ready for an evil onslaught and a powerful display of unbelievable stuff once

the decision is made to attack crack. As long as we know where this stuff is

coming from and believe its one purpose is to destroy all in its way, we can at

least have a fighting chance. That is all we need to win this battle for our

soul and spirit. Start now not after you have your last hit. The last time might

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